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Milton Wolf

The GOP should fear voters, not the fiscal cliff

Republicans don’t have to keep falling for the Democrats’ duplicity. The Democrats pretend the so-called “fiscal cliff” debate is about getting our financial house in order, so they propose a tax increase on people earning more than $200,000 a year (i.e., “millionaires and billionaires” in Democrat-speak), which will fund their leviathan government for all of — drumroll — four days.

These are pathologically unserious people. Their goal is not to solve the current fiscal crisis. Their goal is to use the crisis to grow government and further their statist agenda which, incidentally, created the crisis in the first place. Recall Democrat Rahm Emanuel’s unmasked moment of clarity: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.”

Now, in hopes of enacting their panacea of tax increases, Democrats offer spending cuts that everyone knows never will happen. What’s worse, the president calls for $255 billion in more spending. Only a Democrat would claim increased spending will reduce the deficit, and only a Republican would fall for it.

Blowback

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But the problem is that for most Republicans in office, the Democrats goals are their goals as well. They just simply talk about conservative values to get votes. But when the time comes for them to act, they are only marginally less progressive than the Democrats as a whole. So, they are enjoying this ride just as much as Obama is. They get to claim they had to destroy capitalism in order to save capitalism!

As a lifelong member and financial contributor the GOP is DEAD to me. I am removing my voter classification as Republican and would rather not support the party or what they have become. Our government is a joke and the liberties lost were because of both parties.

The moochers and grifters should fear me. I’m withdrawing from the economy next year as much as possible and will use every trick in the book to keep the takers from taking.

I even bit the bullet and created a FB account to take advantage of the local sale and barter pages just for my area. You wouldn’t believe the number of people who are working the underground economy just here where I live.

Forget about whether or not the Republicans benefit or lose by this.
The important thing is to not allow Obama and the Democrats to have anyone but themselves to blame for the mess that they create.
If the Republicans participate in creating whatever monstrosity comes out of this, the Democrats will have a scapegoat for its failure.

As a lifelong member and financial contributor the GOP is DEAD to me. I am removing my voter classification as Republican and would rather not support the party or what they have become. Our government is a joke and the liberties lost were because of both parties.

Let It Burn!

trs on December 6, 2012 at 9:50 AM

If things stay the way they are with the GOP, going independent or unaffiliated is exactly what it will take to make the GOP give a poop about what you think! That is the joke.

And the fear of the voters should not be strong . . . if they stand up for principle. The cards are stacked against the Dems retaking the House in 2014. The Dems losing governorships and state legislatures has consequences. This is a majority of Red State congressional reps because there is a majority of Red State districts.

I’d rather the GOP make decisions based on the right thing to do, instead of out of fear, or out of greed, or because they want people to like them. Or at least make choices because of a strategy to achieve their goals.

But, since they’ve never used any sound reasoning, I take comfort in the fact that the GOP’s stance doesn’t matter. Reality always wins in the end. And reality dictates that Uncle Sam will eventually have to cut spending.

These are pathologically unserious people. Their goal is not to solve the current fiscal crisis. Their goal is to use the crisis to grow government and further their statist agenda which, incidentally, created the crisis in the first place.

Unfortunately, politics is not about governance. It’s about obtaining raw power and enjoying the trappings thereof. That’s what always happens when you concentrate political power and that’s why the founders tried to disburse and distribute it. The only way we will ever solve our currnet problems is to go back to a federalist system and fragment the power currently concentrated in Washington D.C.

a tax increase on people earning more than $200,000 a year (i.e., “millionaires and billionaires” in Democrat-speak),

I know they are always talking about this, but as far as I know we still do not have that tax bracket of $200K single/$250 filing jointly. The top one percent bracket starts at $388K (35% marginal bracket) with some kind of half deal for Married filing separately. There are no examples of this yet are there? The devil is always in the details, does this mean that $125 each filing seperately or will you get 200K each filing married/separately?

Making $125K does not make you a millionaire very quickly, I am afraid at a 39% tax rate, you will never get there.

Wolf is a smart guy, I agree mostly with what he says, except, I am willing to trade upper income deductions for marginal rate reductions a la Romney. Many people who do like the rich, still think the tax accountants find things for them that others don’t see or can’t get in terms of tax breaks…crony capitalists too…all these targeted tax credits intended to shape behavior have to go. Especially the one where you buy a Chevy Volt for $40K and get a $7000 tax credit. That is not a tax credit “of the people” for god’s sake.

So, I do not agree with some of the editorializing that removing tax credits and special set asides equates with a tax hike. Because not everyone could take it. The media, of course, pro and con, will twist this to play however it wants depending on the audience. Cutting loopholes when dems remove them, and RAISING TAXES on the rich, if republicans are doing it.

As a lifelong member and financial contributor the GOP is DEAD to me. I am removing my voter classification as Republican…

trs on December 6, 2012 at 9:50 AM

Yep. That’s the thing to do. THe GOP is totally worthless. They were given a mandate and a chance in 2010 (after they had committed political suicide in 2007 with their idiotic push for amnesty) but the Weeping Boner and the ineffectual idiots in the House went on to help Barky out with his insane spending and other America-hating plans. Boner and the GOP proved that they cannopt be trusted to stop the Indonesian and his lunatic leftist junta – and that is the only thing the GOP had to do. They passed debt limit raise after debt limit raise, continuing resolution after continuing resolution and never got anything in return (when the full repeal of ObamaScare should have been attached to one of those bills). And the Weeping Boner went out of his way to act as if the Tea Party was the crazy violent group that the lunatic left lied about (as if) while at the same time he had to explain that he “understood” the crazy, violent, rapey Occupoopers (who didn’t even understand themselves).

It’s far past enough from the GOP. They are totally useless. My last GOP vote was in 2012 for a last ditch effort to possibly restore America, but the GOP couldn’t play that correctly, either. So, we are far past the point of no return. There is really only national divorce, now (I share nothing with anyone who voted for the Indonesian or supports him in any way and want nothing to do with any of those slimebags) and until that divorce I won’t have anything to do with the GOP.

The GOP tried so hard to kill itself with amnesty and it just about did. They were saved from themselves by the Tea Party but they blew that and are now working to make sure that their suicide run is completed. It shall be. Re-electing the Weeping Boner and his leadership idiots in the new Congress only solidified the notion that the GOP is a total POS that must be relegated to the trash heap of history. Boner should have been unceremoniously thrown out of leadership back in March 2011 when it was clear that he was a total failure … but they kept him on and kept him in power after the disaster of 2012. That’s it.

As for the “fiscal cliff” debate, let the Democrats own it. Republicans would be foolish to compromise with Democrats, whose real goal is to grow the non-taxpayer class by shifting the tax burden onto fewer and fewer voters. This is exactly what a tax increase on “the rich” does. It would be far better to allow all of the George W. Bush tax cuts to expire than to play into the Democrats’ hands. The economy will suffer either way, and Republicans will be blamed either way — that’s a given — but the Democrats finally will be exposed.

Well said. I am going to flag his site. He is a good communicator

The DEMS have a formula. As soon as the GOP gives an inch, the WH will seize it, blow it, and demand another inch.

This is how the Unions hog tied the auto companies as management computed how long they had to survive to get to the golden parachute, and ceded territory to the unions to get there

The fiscal cliff was used to get Boehner and his Club out of their last perceived jam. It was staged so Obama, if re elected, could use it as a club coming out of the gate. No wonder Obama signed it

You can assume two things:
1. Obama wants taxes and spending freedom in any deal
2. He wants the deal to be incompetent so he can move quickly to demand more as soon as the first deal is depleted and failing

The cliff is the only deal that cannot be held hostage. No one has to beg to get Obama to sign it. The MSM cannot leverage this bill.

Conventional wisdom holds that the sequester is a mindless anti-spending Godzilla. But the sequester, because it is set in legislative stone, possesses what Washington today lacks with the public: credibility.

Better the fiscal cliff than pitching the American people over the bottomless entitlement cliff.